


The Others

by BorderCollie



Category: Vicious - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-21 20:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16583330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BorderCollie/pseuds/BorderCollie
Summary: Extraordinary people exist all around the world. From Merit to London, let's travel around the world and see who else has superpowers.





	1. Emily Garza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young woman survives a shooting, and it's both a curse and a blessing.

Emily Garza walked along the streets of one of the biggest metropolises on the West Coast. As she briskly hurried to the underground metro, she looked to her left. Below the waterfront sidewalk she was on were some docks. As the sun set on the horizon, she watched the orangish pink rays seep through the abundance of white sails.

But it didn’t make her feel better. She had been in the city for almost a month, and still felt like she was running away from her past. Sometimes at night, she would stare at the ceiling and still remember those days when she drank nonstop. When she could only take more and more drugs. When she told her mom she hated her, and then never got to apologize after losing her to a drunk driver.

She took a good look in the mirror and decided to leave the cold city of Merit, Wisconsin. Emily left the darkness of all the concrete, stone, and brick skyscrapers behind and took a plane to warm and hilly city of Los Angeles, California where its buildings and towers were made of bright glass. Palm trees and bronze rails aligned the streets.

“I’m still the same,” she said, heading into the metro station along with the crowd.

Emily saw advertisements of beer on the walls. She shook her head and swiped the scanner, so she could go to the platform and wait for the F Train. It was supposed to take her to the residential district of Winston Falls. That was where her small rental home was.

“Just one more year,” she said, referring to her job as a waitress at the Segovia Hotel. Then, she’d be able to get into college and hopefully get her life back on track.

She stood very close to the orange line of the platform. While fixing her black hair, she could feel something behind her. It wasn’t a physical thing. But it was there. Just as she turned around, she made eye contact with him. There wasn’t enough time to think about why he did it. Maybe he was deranged. Or angry. Perhaps he was doing it because of a political statement.

But the man with sunglasses and a hoodie began firing bullets with a very large gun towards various innocent people. The bullets sprayed across the station just as the train began slowing to a halt. Emily couldn’t help but jump behind a post. Screams filled the air. The sound of walls and bodies being shot up did too. The train’s doors opened.

“Run!”  
“No! Please!”  
“Help me!”

Dead. Dead. Dead. One plea after the other. Suddenly, the train started to depart once again as it closed its doors. The operator was protecting whatever people were still in the cars. Just as it left the station, Emily could see the fluorescent lights overhead being shadowed by the shooter.

She didn’t cry. I deserve it. After what I did to Mom, I have no right to beg. But I have every right to die.

Only if she was somebody else would she try to fight back. The bullet pierced her chest. Shock immediately took over. As he walked away to kill others, she kept thinking that maybe she would’ve fought back. If only she were somebody else. Somebody worthy of survival.

If only I were somebody else. If only I were somebody else.

And then darkness consumed her. The light in her vision faded away to nothingness. Wherever she was headed, she just hoped she could be forgiven for all that she did.

…

“Clear!” she heard somebody say.

It was a strange sensation of her being sucked back into her body. Numbness. Difficulty breathing, but still breathing. A few moments later, Emily found the strength to open her eyes and was blinded temporarily by the white lights.

“Back!” she heard again from a woman’s voice. Her own heart was beeping on the monitor. Did she make it? Everything was white, but it didn’t feel like she crossed over. Of course she didn’t. The lights were the inside of an emergency room. The woman was a doctor.

“We lost you in the ambulance,” a paramedic said, “But you’re going to be fine.”

A warm comforting feeling consumed Emily. It was like a light. The smallest light possible in a void of darkness. Because with every shadow, there must be light somewhere.

…

Emily’s uncovered bandages revealed a nasty scar that would probably last the rest of her life. But she didn’t care. She got the feeling that she was brought back for a reason. What exactly would that be? She didn’t know. She guessed it was her life’s purpose to find that out.

On the TV in her small bedroom, a reporter was talking on and on. But when she said Merit, Emily looked to the screen.

The news reporter continued, “It appears that a grave robbery has occurred at one of Merit’s local cemeteries. Although there have been unconfirmed reports from witnesses that a man climbed out of the grave, no other details have been given besides the victim’s name. Victor Vale, thirty-two.

What if he came back to life? Emily thought.

Without warning, her hands began to change. Brown skin quickly began metamorphosing into a pale color. Like snow. She turned to a mirror and watched herself transform from a woman of Mexican heritage into a Caucasian male with blond hair. When she looked at the news, Victor Vale’s portrait was an identical reflection of the person she just shifted into.

Screaming bloody murder in a male voice, she fell to the floor and could feel the cells shaking back into her normal self. Writhing on the floor, she kept transforming back into Emily Garza. Painful? No. But it was a sensation unlike any other.

After getting ahold of herself, she quietly got up and walked to the TV screen again. The reporter on the TV had dark skin. She was probably African-American. When Emily thought about it, she could feel her cells transforming into her. Shaking it off, she began thinking of somebody else. It took a while to decide, but she eventually decided to become Patricia Stevens, the elderly woman next door.

“What is this?” she whispered to herself.

Occasionally, she’d stumble across an article of apparent EO sightings. EO, or an Extraordinary. People with special abilities. To the public, they were nothing but a bogus theory from the internet. But Emily was seeing it now. As she morphed back into herself, she believed what most called the impossible. Her beliefs, her life’s purpose, and everything she once was would be changed.

At this moment, she realized that this was the light hiding in the shadows.


	2. Carter Bush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A boy who hates heat goes to therapy.

Carter Bush kept staring at a Newton’s cradle. The left pendulum ball would fly upwards and then descend back down until it hit the three stationary balls in the center, ultimately causing the right pendulum ball to fly upwards. He loved watching it. It made him happy. He felt peaceful. For once since it happened. He was mesmerized and could watch while forgetting the world existed.

“Have you been getting rest?”

His trance was disturbed, and he immediately felt despair again. When Carter looked at Dr. Hemingway, he noticed how unharmed she was. She had smooth skin and all her limbs. The glass window next to him reflected his face. But he instantly looked away, so he wouldn’t see an amputee.

“Yeah, I’ve been getting rest on weekdays. School has been very stressful. With everybody passing by me, I have to put in effort not to cry. But on the weekends, I just sit at home and I can’t seem to get tired,” he said, thinking about his once normal body before the fire burned it. Spared his face but took away his left arm. Sure, he still had his strawberry blond hair, green eyes, and freckles. But he was missing his arm.

“You’re stagnant, Carter. This whole situation has put you in a state where you don’t want to move. I remember you telling me you liked science. Biology. Chemistry. Even physics. Don’t you?”

“I do,” he said, thinking about how science gave him the opportunity to get surgical skin grafts on his chest and stomach. He thought about how it used to fuel his dream profession, “That’s why I wanted to become a vet.”

Dr. Hemingway continued, “Well, then I’m sure you know about inertia. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. You are at rest. But inertia also works with motion. Things in motion tend to stay in motion. A force acting upon an object can cause it to move.”

“What force?” Carter asked.

“Your mom says she has a hard time getting you up. You spend time in your room, addicted to your phone.”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“That’s you staying at rest. You can’t find motion unless you actually get up. Fresh air. That’s what I want you to focus on this next week. Go outside. Stare at the trees. Learn how to play sports again. Maybe just walk your dog. Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah.”  
“And if you’re lucky, you may just end up feeling that ambition again.”  
“I hope so,” he said.  
“Well, it appears we’re done for the day. Perhaps your mom could speak with me?”

“Doctor Hemingway, I know our session is over, but can I ask you something?” Carter asked, ready to address the thing both of them were very aware of. The elephant in the room if you will.  
“Oh don’t worry about the time, go right ahead.”  
“When did you…. Know I was like you?”

Lisa Hemingway took off her glasses, thrown back to their first session around six weeks ago. She said, “I knew you were one of us when you stepped into the door. My senses are stronger than you give me credit for. I could spot our kind from a mile away wearing a blindfold.”

Carter nodded, “Okay, but what I really want to ask is how did…How did you….”  
“I got them from overdosing on drugs.”

Lisa was intelligent like that.

“My mom told me she’d be late picking me up. Can you tell me about the whole thing?

She got up from her chair and stood next to Carter, “I was fourteen, just like you, and homeless. Scared. Alone. Dying. But it was either no food, no water, and no shelter or a warm house but with my father who had considerable strength. I wasn’t going to get beaten up by him again. So I ran away. But the south side is full of homeless people and drug abusers. I unfortunately turned to heroin.”

“And that’s what you overdosed on?”  
“Yes. And I could practically feel myself being swallowed up by blackness.”  
“That’s what I felt in the fire,” Carter said.  
“What was that like? You’ve never gotten into detail, but since we have similar histories, would you mind telling me what caused the fire?”

He gulped from anxiety. His parents knew of course. Paramedics, doctors, and nurses. But the kids at school? Neighbors? No, they just knew it was a fire. The specifics never left his mouth. Nobody aside from a select few individuals knew he died and came back to life.

“They think it was an electrical fire in our garage. I woke up and the smoke detector was beeping. My dog was barking. And the top of my room had smoke. Instantly, I just got up and ran through blackness. Dark, hot, and toxic fumes. I thought my dog was inside, so I walked around yelling his name. The last thing I could remember were the flames engulfing me and the walls caving in on me.”

Lisa had sympathy in her eyes.

“Next thing I know, I’m swallowed up in blackness just like you were. I don’t know why I was given my gift when I was revived. Doctor Hemingway, what do you think? I mean, so many people are close to death. Why don’t they become like us?”

She got up and walked to the window, admiring the skyline of Chicago and the shimmering blue Lake Michigan.

“What do you think?” Carter asked again.

She sighed and replied with, “I think it has to do with our motivation to live. You and I both didn’t want to die. Something in us perhaps caused it to activate. I believe it’s our thoughts. My only thought as I was fading into darkness was that I wanted to know what was happening every other person in the world. Being killed is a big moment in your life. I think when I was revived, that’s what caused me to be able to have the gift of sensing other people’s biological information with just my mind.”

Carter didn’t know what to say. But he knew it had a chance of being true. Because he had a thought like that too when he was being burned to death.

“I was so hot. Everything was so dry and smoky,” Carter said, staring off into space, “The last thing I thought of was wanting to be cold. To be as cold as it was scientifically possible to be. I even remember hearing the words ‘absolute zero’ in my head. The image….it was an image of ice and snow. Water. Freezing water. Like the water that the people in the Titanic were swimming in. I just wanted to be in icy waters. Anything but burning to death.”

“Can you show me? I’m sorry, it’s just been a long time since I’ve seen any performance of abilities.”

Carter opened his backpack with his one arm and took out a water bottle. He set it down on the table between them and just stared at it for one second. Immediately, the water burst out as it tore apart the bottle’s plastic. All the water seemed to float magically in the air in hundreds of droplets until it began swirling around, condensing into an orb of liquid. Then, the liquid began to freeze into solid ice. Carter blinked, and the ball of ice fell to the floor.

It was as round as the Newton’s cradle balls.

“I did this to myself,” Carter said, “I asked to become cold. To become ice. So nature froze my genetics. I just wish I could reverse it.”

Dr. Hemingway knelt down and said, “Don’t wish to reverse it. You have a gift. And anyone who stands in your way shall face your power.”

It was only a matter of time before she got him to do her bidding. Soon he’d be lying, stealing, and killing for her own gain. After talking to his mom in the lobby, she grinned menacingly. For she finally found a patient who had a traumatic near-death experience. She finally found somebody just like her. But with a lethal touch.

But just how would she convince him to torture everyone who ever brought her pain?


	3. Hong Ying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She obtained her abilities extraordinarily quick after being revived. She hadn't used them before, but her instincts told her what to do.

The rain poured on the muddy earth like a giant showerhead. But it was freezing cold. As Lam Aiyan kept doing chest compressions on the woman who sat next to her on the plane, she could see the wound on her head was getting worse. Both were flying on Air Orient Flight 1246 from Shanghai to Beijing. Only the plane never made it.

She kept doing chest compressions, then leaning down to her head to tilt it back and provide oxygen to her lungs. But the wound, blood was pouring down her head. Ying had to live. There had to be a chance for her to survive. Something told her that she had to drag the dead woman out of the swamp where the plane crashed and broke apart in.

The Boeing 737 was in multiple fragments with people still clinging onto the fuselage and wings. Survivors were dragging themselves out of the muddy waters. Some were bloody, others were completely fine.

“Hey! Help me!” Aiyan shouted in Cantonese to a younger woman passing by them.

“What’s wrong?!” she asked.

“Put pressure on her cut while I resuscitate her,” Aiyan ordered. The young lady, no older than sixteen, took off her drenched sweater and put it on the massive laceration on dead Ying’s forehead.

“Come on! Come on!” Aiyan kept saying until finally, Ying’s mouth opened and spat out water. She vomited and coughed up whatever was in her lungs, rolling over and moaning in pain.

“It’s okay! Just let it out,” Aiyan said.

Ying jerked up, seemingly uninjured. She threw the sweater off her head, letting blood drip again. Then she was bombarded with new sensations.

“Stay down!” Aiyan said, “You’re hurt!”

“No, I’m not,” Ying said, “I have to help!”

Ying ran across the muddy grass which was littered with metal and passenger seats. Right in front of her was the watery swamp where fragments of the plane were sinking. She dove in the water, not caring about the sawgrass that cut her skin. Because it instantly kept healing. The instincts in her were brand new but felt like they’d been part of her for as long as she lived. 

The only reason why she was given new abilities was because when she was thrown into the water, she visualized herself being indestructible and capable of having enough strength to withstand the brutal force of the aircraft’s collision with terrain.

When she got to the biggest fragment of the aircraft, the part with the wings, she climbed inside and still saw plenty of passengers injured in their seats. Many were unconscious or in various states of delirium. Some were trying to stay afloat at water was flooding up to their necks. Maybe there were fifty or sixty people still alive and unable to escape.

Ying hadn’t used her extraordinary power before, but she knew how to use it. She just knew. Adrenaline simply took over, and she swam back outside and underneath the aircraft. Putting her hands on the belly, she lifted it upwards like doing reps on weight equipment. The plane began to appear out of the water.

She had an entire 737 on her shoulders, taking one step at a time until she got to the shoreline of the swamp. Then, in one huff, she tossed it onto a clear area of mud. Water poured out of it, and that’s when rescue helicopters appeared in the distance.

There were approximately an additional fifty survivors who had already made it out of the plane. All saw her do it.

“Impossible,” someone whispered.  
“It’s not impossible,” Ying said, “It’s just extraordinary.”

Another thing that was extraordinary was how sore her muscles were later that day. But given the sheer size of the aircraft, it’s also extraordinary how it only took a few painkillers to make her feel better.


End file.
